Judgment Call

Joanna Brady Mysteries

By: J. A. Jance

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

When Joanna Brady's daughter, Jenny, stumbles across the body of her high school principal, Debra Highsmith, in the desert, the Cochise County sheriff's personal and professional worlds collide. Though she's tried to protect her children from the dangers of the grown-up world, the search for justice leads straight to her own door and forces her to face the possibility that her beloved daughter may be less perfect than she seems.

Yet the deeper Joanna digs, the more complications she uncovers. It seems the quiet, upstanding principal had a hidden past, full of mysterious secrets she'd successfully kept buried for years. As the seasoned sheriff juggles professional constraints and personal demands, she finds herself walking a fine line between justice and family that has never been so blurred.

©2012 J.A. Jance (P)2012 HarperCollinsPublishers

Fast moving and suspenseful story.

Great book. Narration excellent. Love this series! I especially liked the family dynamics and the mystery surrounding the sheriff's father's death.

Judgment Call.

Another great story. J A Jance does it again. This one will keep you going on multiple stories as usual. I did notice that in this book Joanna shrunk by 2 inches. 😄

Good writing, not good delivery

This is a great story, but I simply cannot listen to another book narrated by Hillary Huber. It is just painful. She fails to bring the book alive and succeeds greatly in irritating me. I won't be listening to any more books by her. Unfortunately, all the books after this one are narrated by her. I'll buy the books and read them myself.

JOANNA BRADY DOES IT AGAIN

She's a sheriff and a working mom who has to deal with the murder of the high school principal while living with a touchy teenager and a toddler. It's a good thing she has a helpful husband, Butch the writer. J.A. Jance's stories are always top drawer.

Classic Jance

Love all of her stuff and this is well up to standard. Well read too. Some good tying up of old story lines.

Here's another page -turner from J.A. Jance!

Sheriff Joanna Brady 's life is going rather well until her daughter discovers the high school principal's body lying beside the road not far from their home. Multiple gunshot wounds prove the principal's death was no accident. Solving the murder is difficult enough; but when Joanna discovers the principal had been using a false identity, things really get complicated. To make matters worse, Joanna soon learns the murderer isn't finished yet. This story will hold your attention!

Joanna Brady is back

I like the Joanna Brady series best of the three series J.A. Jance writes. I was so happy that at long last there is a new installment. Joanna Brady is the sheriff of Cochise County AZ., a job that her father also held. Joanna's daughter Jenny finds a dead body when she was out riding her horse. The body turned out to be the school principle. The story goes into the problems of information being posted on the internet social sites and the problems it causes law enforcement and also in the case a photo posted caused the death of the person. Joanna and her Mother interacted more often in this story, than in past books with Joanna learning she has some things in common with her mother. As a side story, in the book, Joanna discovers her Father was murdered and she sets out to solve the crime. Susan Ericksen had narrated other books in this series and did a great job unfortunately Hillary Huber does not meet the high standard set byEricksen. Over all this is a great story well written. Can not wait the the next book in the series.

Even bad narrator can't ruin Joanna

Very odd -- for a series as popular as J A Jance's Joanna Brady books, for as many segments as there are in the series, it's odd that there have been so many different narrators. By contrast, Gene Eugene was a decades-long standard for narrating the J P Beaumont series. Why the vast variety in the Joanna Brady books?

Hillary Huber is my least favorite of them all. I'll never fail to buy the Brady books, but I really do wish they'd stop using Huber -- the books read by Stephanie Brush are by far the best. Brush sounds exactly like I'd expect Joanna to sound. C.J. Critt is my second favorite.

Hillary Huber is the worst. She has a very strange narration voice. Sometimes it's so smooth, flat and nasal it borders on robotic. Then she lapses into a sort of bored-sounding nasally valley girl accent for Jenny, which, while grating and not reflective of the character of Jenny, might possibly work for a teenager, but then Huber seems to forget what she's doing, and suddenly we have a sheriff talking like a bored teen. And all the men sound like bright, chipper, perky young men, whereas we know most of them are older than Joanna and not all of them are eager-beavers, contrary to the way Huber has them talking.

It can't be easy to narrate audiobooks. To come up with different but credible voices for each character must be a challenge. But surely the narrator could manage to stay awake. Time and time again she missed changing her voice for the character -- it was terribly annoying.

That said, Judgement Calls is a worthy installment in the Joanna Brady series. We finally find out what happened to Joanna's father, and best of all, we get plenty of action from Joanna's mother, who makes me laugh and cry at the same time, because she reminds me so much of my mother. There's one classic interchange, I had to play it three times to enjoy it completely: Joanna has news about her long-dead father's murder, and wants to tell her mother about it, so she calls and says merely that she'd like to stop by for a cup of coffee. Sensing something amiss -- that isn't Joanna's usual habit -- Eleanor asks what's wrong. Joanna demurs, saying they'll talk about it later. Eleanor spouts, "Oh, I know! Andy's left you, hasn't he?" Made me just howl! That is such a typical reaction from a whole legion of mothers, especially those of Eleanor's vintage. Great stuff -- as was Eleanor's occasional graciousness to Joanna when they're in public. The troubled and somewhat caustic mother-daughter relationship in these books is something that a lot of mothers -- and daughters -- will recognize.

These books are filled with that -- real life stories, real people, real everyday problems and situations. Every installment is a treat.

That said, I sure would appreciate it if the publishers would find -- and then stick to -- a better narrator, though. Please, more Stephanie Brush!

Brilliant

What made the experience of listening to Judgment Call the most enjoyable?

I have loved all the Joanna Brady Mysteries and enjoy all the characters and personalities. Every new book I think is it going to be as good? but they just got better.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Has to be Joanna, she has had so many experiences to knock her down but she remains positive and proactive.

Which scene was your favorite?

Joanna' mother giving her praise at the end of the aution

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Joanna solves the puzzle again.

Any additional comments?

J.A. Jance please keep all your characters going and give us many more stories to enjoy and thanks for all the ones already published.

Ops, They caught me. I thought I did it right!

If you could sum up Judgment Call in three words, what would they be?

Loved the twists.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Yes, I finished it in 24 hours. The twists kept me guessing as to which way they would turn, and if I was right.

What does Hillary Huber bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

She became all the different characters.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Yes, I hated the step-brother because he could not or would not understand what the father was doing, and how much the sister gave up just for doing the right thing.